Are constructors of that much value?

If you do not fleet them then the enemy must attack them individually, using up its movement allowance to take out one ship at a time. This can buy you a turn or two to get an actual fleet of attack ships to the scene. If your ships are significanly stronger than your opponents this can actually be more effective than fleeting them.(at least in my experience)

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This will only work if you have reasonably competative ships, so if you are challenging yourself with a difficulty level well beyond your comfort zone then your ships will be as about as effective as the Enterprise is against the Borg!

True, but if you do not have competitive ships, your starbases (even fully moduled) aren't going to be any more effective and will die anyway. Also I have only worked my way up to challenging so far. I have only been playing DA for about a month.

Oh in DL i found a good trick.... you can block attacking ships (if they are going for the starbase) with a line up of crap ships - so long as you always leave an open path to the starbase, the enemy ships will usually try to go around your crap ships. You can hold off an enemy indefinately by constantly moving your ships into blocking positions each turn.

Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky I have done this also. Also works to block them off from a planet that they want to colonize.

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After you have built the starbase, move the ships on top of it and do not fleet them. Any attacker must defeat all the ships before it can attack the starbase.

Why don't you fleet them? Guarding your bases/resource mines with fleets is a good idea, but in my games there are usually too many resources to protect them all, especially in the early game. When the assasination event happens, spawning little enemy crap ships, my unprotected mines get destroyed. The way I play now, it costs me 2 extra constructors per mine to give some decent low-level protection. Later on, these defenses are not strong enough, but by then I protect the most important mines with fleets.

A little bit more detailed response (hopefully to clear up a few things).

First: do NOT add offense/defense modules to the resource base. This makes it the lowest priority in any attack. This can also allow you to not research the techs for these improvements, which allows you to concentrate on better ships (or any other tech area)

Second: You can approach the ship question a couple of ways. You can build a large number of very cheap tiny ships with one weapon and not fleet them to create a wall of ships that the enemy must burn through in order to get to the starbase. Example: if you have 5 ships on top of the base and the enemy has a movement allowance of 2 it will take him two turns to burn through the ships and can only attack the base on the third turn. Another way would be to build a few very competitive ships and fleet them/not fleet them based on your relative strength to the enemy in question. Due to the strongest ship surviving the battle part of DA combat, I have found that not fleeting usually works best for me in this situation, it really depends on the strength of the opponent you are facing and how his ships are equipped.

Third: Prioritize your protection strategy if you have many resources. Everyone has a different playstyle, but my priority list is 1:Military resource 2:Economic resource 3:Morale Resource 4:Strategic econ/trade bases 5:Influence resource 6:Other non-resource bases.

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:Military resource 2:Economic resource 3:Morale Resource 4:Strategic econ/trade bases 5:Influence resource 6:Other non-resource bases.

what about research resources? (i'd probably place them as a tie with #4)

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:Military resource 2:Economic resource 3:Morale Resource 4:Strategic econ/trade bases 5:Influence resource 6:Other non-resource bases.

what about research resources? (i'd probably place them as a tie with #4)

Oooops

yeah I think they would come before 4 as well. Then again, it would depend on how well you are doing in the other areas, do you really need the morale, economic, or research more ? I would always put military at the top and influence at the bottom, but some people who play as diplomatic types may well reverse it.

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i think i'd also make morale a lower priority. getting 2 or 3 morale bases makes a huge difference, but after that the bonus caps and other bases are just backup.

as for research resources vs. econ/trade bases - it's really tough. both boost production in the end, but obviously research resources don't boost industrial production. they, however, have a global effect. losing one econ base in most games doesn't affect my empire all that much, but in a tight tech race losing one research resource sucks.

but ultimately i think it really depends on the game and the situation. military resources are always important, but if someone takes out an econ resource you might find your ability to support that military suddenly gone.

how i defend the bases depends on the tech speed of the game. it's relatively easy to research the first two levels of SB defenses. if tech is very slow, i find it's worth it to arm them simply because i'm producing more structors between each new tech i learn. on very fast tech games, the AIs usually have high-end weapons by the time my fleets of structors are starting to reach the more distant resources.

most generally, i rely on strong diplomacy and trade to keep me out of wars i don't want to fight. after that, my military only needs to be good enough to keep the AIs from hating me (at least until one of their leaders is assassinated).

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i think i'd also make morale a lower priority. getting 2 or 3 morale bases makes a huge difference, but after that the bonus caps and other bases are just backup.

as for research resources vs. econ/trade bases - it's really tough. both boost production in the end, but obviously research resources don't boost industrial production. they, however, have a global effect. losing one econ base in most games doesn't affect my empire all that much, but in a tight tech race losing one research resource sucks.

but ultimately i think it really depends on the game and the situation. military resources are always important, but if someone takes out an econ resource you might find your ability to support that military suddenly gone.

how i defend the bases depends on the tech speed of the game. it's relatively easy to research the first two levels of SB defenses. if tech is very slow, i find it's worth it to arm them simply because i'm producing more structors between each new tech i learn. on very fast tech games, the AIs usually have high-end weapons by the time my fleets of structors are starting to reach the more distant resources.

most generally, i rely on strong diplomacy and trade to keep me out of wars i don't want to fight. after that, my military only needs to be good enough to keep the AIs from hating me (at least until one of their leaders is assassinated).

And there you have it. Everyone has a different playstyle, so priorites will be different for everyone. The point about multiple resources (of the same type) under your control will indeed affect the priority listing (good point that). I find (in my limited experience) that I can keep up with the ship research by not researching the starbase off/def techs and use cheap ships to defend them.

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I just wanted to say that the fact that we can play this game in so many different styles that all work is a real testament to the game design.

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Zydor

Join Date 03/2006

+38

I just wanted to say that the fact that we can play this game in so many different styles that all work is a real testament to the game design.

Absolutely.

In all the whirlwind of informed discussion that takes place on Strategy / Tactics etc, the one overall fact that those new to the game should take on board - there is no "silver Bullett", or "Best Method", it really does depend on your own play style and likes and dislikes. The game will react to your playstyle.

Thats not to say each strategy or tactic should not be shown and disected - of course they should - we learn from each other, and its always good to get a different spin on things. Thats the tactical side of the game, take elements of what others suggest/like and adapt to your own game, but dont be mislead that they are guaranteed "secrets" of success, they are not.

As to the Strategic Level, there is no "True Way", and new players should not beat themselves up looking for a magic wand to success, its not there. Just enjoy for what it is, a game, and use that pragmatic approach to innovate new methods, not as a "copy that" exercise, and subsequent fruitless search for the mythical "Holy Grail" solution.

Regards
Zy

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"First: do NOT add offense/defense modules to the resource base. This makes it the lowest priority in any attack. This can also allow you to not research the techs for these improvements, which allows you to concentrate on better ships (or any other tech area)."

I've had a lot of success with a different strategy. Build up your starbases' defensive and offensive capabilities as rapidly as possible. This enables the starbases to protect themselves to a large extent, while I concentrate my ships in big offensive fleets or in central reserves to defend critical systems.

It's a lot of fun to watch sizeable enemy fleets bounce off well-defended starbases while most of my ships are busy attacking lightly defended star systems and conquering planet after planet. Well defended resource bases are death magnets for most AI fleets until late in the game. Even then, it takes a fairly powerful fleet to beat them.

The opportunity cost of pursuing starbase defense research isn't that big because the research effort is not that costly and it can be applied to all types of starbases. The opportunity cost for starbase offense research is greater because it primarily benefits military starbases.

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"First: do NOT add offense/defense modules to the resource base. This
makes it the lowest priority in any attack. This can also allow you to
not research the techs for these improvements, which allows you to
concentrate on better ships (or any other tech area)."

I've
had a lot of success with a different strategy. Build up your
starbases' defensive and offensive capabilities as rapidly as possible.
This enables the starbases to protect themselves to a large extent,
while I concentrate my ships in big offensive fleets or in central
reserves to defend critical systems.

It's a lot of fun to watch
sizeable enemy fleets bounce off well-defended starbases while most of
my ships are busy attacking lightly defended star systems and
conquering planet after planet. Well defended resource bases are death
magnets for most AI fleets until late in the game. Even then, it takes
a fairly powerful fleet to beat them.

The opportunity cost of
pursuing starbase defense research isn't that big because the research
effort is not that costly and it can be applied to all types of
starbases. The opportunity cost for starbase offense research is
greater because it primarily benefits military starbases.

Again, yet another successful way of pursuing victory. Really it all comes down to what you are comfortable with. Me I tend to be more concerned with keeping my ships at peak perfomance versus my opponents, which makes research a concern for me. I play with no tech trading, which makes it even more of a concern. The no tech trading is just how I feel the real world would be like in a galaxy of opposing sides.
I wish you could limit it rather than just have it on or off. I would like to be able to say ok no tech trading unless you are allied.

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Again, yet another successful way of pursuing victory. Really it all comes down to what you are comfortable with. Me I tend to be more concerned with keeping my ships at peak perfomance versus my opponents, which makes research a concern for me. I play with no tech trading, which makes it even more of a concern. The no tech trading is just how I feel the real world would be like in a galaxy of opposing sides.
I wish you could limit it rather than just have it on or off. I would like to be able to say ok no tech trading unless you are allied.

Yes, there are many ways to win. As several people have said, that's one of the main reasons Gal Civ is such a great game.

I tend to agree with you on limiting tech trading to just allies, but there's a lot of historical experience on Earth of tech trading between countries that aren't formally allied. Sometimes we even see tech trading or at least tech gifting between nations that are basically hostile. This usually occurs when both nations are threatened by a common enemy. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." (At least temporarily).

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I have a more basic question about economic bases (not on an economic resource).

You build one the first one and it does nothing. Add another and it apparently gives
you a 5% bonus. Bonus to that planet's income and all of those within its sphere of influence.

If you add more constructors to the original, do you just get added defensive/offensive/sensing capabilities? And no more economic bonuses?

I guess you build a different but only 4 per quadrant?

Then what exactly are the benefits of building on an economic resource? Is the bonus just to trade or is there more than that?

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I have a more basic question about economic bases (not on an economic resource).

You build one the first one and it does nothing. Add another and it apparently gives
you a 5% bonus. Bonus to that planet's income and all of those within its sphere of influence.

If you add more constructors to the original, do you just get added defensive/offensive/sensing capabilities? And no more economic bonuses?

I guess you build a different but only 4 per quadrant?

Then what exactly are the benefits of building on an economic resource? Is the bonus just to trade or is there more than that?

Wha huh? The bonus from econ starbases can be upgraded many many times to at least 25% bonus to ALL production (social, military AND research) to all planets within its field of influence, AND you can build trading posts to upgrade trade revenue. Research up the better econ buildings like stock market and such, and you'll see how useful a good econ base can be.

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Mystikmind

Join Date 06/2004

+20

True, but if you do not have competitive ships, your starbases (even fully moduled) aren't going to be any more effective and will die anyway. Also I have only worked my way up to challenging so far. I have only been playing DA for about a month.

Yea, there really is no use building starbases while the enemy has ship superiority in your territory.

But you can build an amada of constructors and make them fast enough so they can evade the enemy untill you have enough of them to build a powerful military starbase or 2 in one hit. Whatever crappy ships you have should become effective after that, but you must have enough ships to defend your new starbases or the enemy will wear you down and deprive you of your new military starbases.

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Again, yet another successful way of pursuing victory. Really it all comes down to what you are comfortable with. Me I tend to be more concerned with keeping my ships at peak perfomance versus my opponents, which makes research a concern for me. I play with no tech trading, which makes it even more of a concern. The no tech trading is just how I feel the real world would be like in a galaxy of opposing sides.
I wish you could limit it rather than just have it on or off. I would like to be able to say ok no tech trading unless you are allied.

Yes, there are many ways to win. As several people have said, that's one of the main reasons Gal Civ is such a great game.

I tend to agree with you on limiting tech trading to just allies, but there's a lot of historical experience on Earth of tech trading between countries that aren't formally allied. Sometimes we even see tech trading or at least tech gifting between nations that are basically hostile. This usually occurs when both nations are threatened by a common enemy. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." (At least temporarily).

I like the idea of gifting techs, but turning tech trades on just seems to result in all the other sides trading EVERY tech. Maybe you could turn individual trees on or off. For me, I would turn all trees except the yellow (diplomacy and influence) off. This would allow me to gift alliances to my close friends(who never seem to research it) without being swamped by the combined tech research of 5 or 6 enemy races that are trading willy-nilly.

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I have a more basic question about economic bases (not on an economic resource).

You build one the first one and it does nothing. Add another and it apparently gives
you a 5% bonus. Bonus to that planet's income and all of those within its sphere of influence.

If you add more constructors to the original, do you just get added defensive/offensive/sensing capabilities? And no more economic bonuses?

I guess you build a different but only 4 per quadrant?

Then what exactly are the benefits of building on an economic resource? Is the bonus just to trade or is there more than that?

Wha huh? The bonus from econ starbases can be upgraded many many times to at least 25% bonus to ALL production (social, military AND research) to all planets within its field of influence, AND you can build trading posts to upgrade trade revenue. Research up the better econ buildings like stock market and such, and you'll see how useful a good econ base can be.

What is problaby going on here is he has not researched far enough up the manufacturing tech line to see that he can further boost the mining. The mining bases have to have manufacturing go up before you can increase the mining capacity.

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DeathGerbil #42 --- Have you tried a "can't beat'em, join'em" strategy for tech trading with the AI species? I've been pretty successful doing this with non-weapons technologies.

Another useful tactic is trading older generations of your most advanced weapons tech to species that aren't researching that part of the weapons tech tree or are a couple of weapons generations behind you. Even hostile species can be very generous with their tech trades for weapons that are more advanced than their current product.

The caveat for the active tech trading strategy is that I tend to have good diplomatic capabilities fairly early in the game -- I usually play the Terrans -- and I prioritize research into trade tech, political system tech, and xeno ethics tech. These tech trees all have bonuses for diplomacy.

Now if you like to play the Drengin or the Yor, this may not be a viable strategy.

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I got two influence resources in my first DA game, which I just finished yesterday on a large map ( with a diplomatic victory... I created a "Super-Terrans" race, high diplomacy, Super Diplomats, etc. ). By the mid-game I was getting one to two planets per turn falling to me, just because of influence. At the end-game, it slowed down, due to me getting close to the other civs homeworlds, but still every other turn a world flipped.

Impressive, impressive. I had about 60% of the vote in the United Planets, too.

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Haven't attempted that yet, my custom race is ecomonic based with low diplomacy. I have done the "suck all the tech from a minor and then destroy him that same turn" thing, but it seems rather cheesy to me. So, I just turn the trading off.

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Building Military (or any ship for that matter) is easy and for me the funnest part of the game. I have had a lot of fun builfing Feration (Star Trek) ships with my current game. And plan an playing my Borg and Klingon race in the future and building thier ships as close to the show as possable. I spend most of my gaming time in the game customizing/upgrading ships. sometimes I have to tell myself to close the dame ship yard and get on with the game

.

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[quote]

Now, freighters, on the other hand, seem mostly destined for use as "please don't hurt us, we give you presents" diplomacy only

unless you invest all your effort in trading, this is pretty much true. even when you do, it's not an optimal strat.

Actully this is not true, at least I have not found it to be true. Freaters make you a lot of money and no I don't put all my effort into them.

asteroid mining. . . well, I've never bothered researching up space mining because it's easier just to flip the enemy's asteroid mines

asteroid mining isn't worth it unless you set your game up for very slow tech progression (huge or gig galaxy, uncommon or rare planets/habitables, very slow tech, possibly tech trading off). on fast games it simply takes too much time to develop mining bases, but on slow games they can make a difference in a number of ways.

you can use them to squeeze out extra turns by redirecting them to planets whose production barely falls short of finishing in 1 week. if you direct an empire's mining bases to a single manufacturing capital for a significant boost to production. however, since it takes about a year IIRC to fully develop a mining base, they don't lend themselves to fast-paced games. the AI never seems to build additional miners, so their asteroid fields are about as worthless as mine when i don't develop them. i have tried building fleets of miners to get my bases up and running quickly. it'd be less pain if there was a governor for mining bases (and spies!).

I have also found that mining is very helpful too. And I use normal tech progression.
Maybe it is just not your play style but I found them both very usfull in the game.

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[quote]

Now, freighters, on the other hand, seem mostly destined for use as "please don't hurt us, we give you presents" diplomacy only

unless you invest all your effort in trading, this is pretty much true. even when you do, it's not an optimal strat.

Actully this is not true, at least I have not found it to be true. Freaters make you a lot of money and no I don't put all my effort into them.

asteroid mining. . . well, I've never bothered researching up space mining because it's easier just to flip the enemy's asteroid mines

asteroid mining isn't worth it unless you set your game up for very slow tech progression (huge or gig galaxy, uncommon or rare planets/habitables, very slow tech, possibly tech trading off). on fast games it simply takes too much time to develop mining bases, but on slow games they can make a difference in a number of ways.

you can use them to squeeze out extra turns by redirecting them to planets whose production barely falls short of finishing in 1 week. if you direct an empire's mining bases to a single manufacturing capital for a significant boost to production. however, since it takes about a year IIRC to fully develop a mining base, they don't lend themselves to fast-paced games. the AI never seems to build additional miners, so their asteroid fields are about as worthless as mine when i don't develop them. i have tried building fleets of miners to get my bases up and running quickly. it'd be less pain if there was a governor for mining bases (and spies!).

I have also found that mining is very helpful too. And I use normal tech progression.
Maybe it is just not your play style but I found them both very usfull in the game.

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